Tag Archives: Facebook

While the study covers all of social media, it’s clear that women in the 18-34 range are focused on their Facebook accounts. More than half of young women (57%) say they talk to people online more than face-to-face. A full 39% of them proclaim themselves Facebook addicts, while 34% of young women make Facebook the first thing they do when they wake up, even before brushing their teeth or going to the bathroom.

Privacy is important, or at least it should be, but unfortunately most people ignore their role in this tale. On the other end of the spectrum we have an organization like Facebook that has decided that privacy is the least of their problems and they are going to exploit an inherent weakness in people: Online Privacy Ignorance.

You remember that game you played in elementary school with the handball and the four squares painted on the black top? Well this FourSquare is a little different.

For those of you unaware of this new Internet phenomenon, FourSquare is basically a mobile application that allows you to “check in” when you are at a new location, connect with people who are there or have been there, and earn rewards for frequent visitation.

I joined FourSquare six months ago and promptly quit when I got a computer virus shortly thereafter (I can’t guarantee it was because of FourSquare … it could have been purely coincidental).

Since then, FourSquare has catapulted to the potential “it” Web application of 2010, showing three-times growth in a two-month period (as reported in early February 2010 by ReadWriteWeb.com); growth by nearly 100,000 users in 10 days and more than 22 million check-ins by its users since late-March 2010 (as reported by Mashable).

Any kinks that I originally experienced are long-gone. FourSquare is here to stay.

So why use it?

If you’re a consumer, it provides value in:

learning tips about specific locations

finding out where a hot-spot is based on quantity of check-ins

special offers and freebies for frequent customers (as tabulated by managers/owners of locations monitoring FourSquare)

finding friends easily

learning about new locations in your area

navigating new cities or places based on peer review

What FourSquare means for businesses and marketers?

Location, location, location. Marketing is on the move. For example:

“Location based consumer targeting looks set to provide benefits for both Foursquare and a number of the companies it has reportedly signed deals with, such as restaurant recommendation site Zagat and Warner Bros, with the promotion of new film Valentines Day offering users the chance to win unique Foursquare badges (Source: Punch Communications).”

Word-of-mouth marketing has gone (pardon the buzz word) viral. We went from mass e-mails to YouTube to Facebook to Twitter … and now FourSquare. Ignoring social media in marketing campaigns is like ignoring the Mack Truck coming right for you.

Marketing campaigns must be integrated. FourSquare gives users the options to post reviews that include links to blog posts or Web sites, and they can share all of that information with their thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends with the simple click of a button on their hand-held mobile device.

So yeah … I like FourSquare now. And even though I’m relatively new to it, the value is apparent and based on research it appears that this sort of location-based marketing will only continue to integrate itself into our society as Yelp recently launched a location check-in application.

“Many people presume it’s only a matter of time until Facebook moves into the location space, which will seriously shake that market up. Yahoo this week had a patent published for geo-located, social Augmented Reality (Source: ReadWriteWeb).”

If you don’t believe this lowly Type A media/marketing-junkie, maybe you’ll listen to BusinessWeek’s senior writer Om Malik about why he loves it.

Years back, before the social media revolution was in full force, I accidentally fell upon an interesting experiment. I was a relatively new cycling instructor and didn’t know my students on a first-name-basis like I do now. In between drills, I mentioned that I ate a piece of chocolate cake before coming to class. And guess what happened … after class I had more students come up and talk to me than ever before.

Intrigued by this concept, I would sprinkle in food-related topics or other surfacy information about my life while teaching and my student feedback during and after class doubled.

Fast-forward to the social media era, where skeptics over-use and abuse the expression “I don’t care what my friend ate for lunch,” as their primary reason for not jumping into the social media mix. I’m here to call out a resounding BS.

In fact, prior to dreaming up this post, Saturday morning I wrote this in my Facebook status:

Seven comments, one phone call and three “likes” later, I’m here to tell you that people do care.

Whether a brand or a person representing his or her own brand, people want to connect with other people. They appreciate people who talk to them, not at them; and who share tidbits about their lives making them real.

Social media is a fantastic way to exchange professional information, share tips, deals and tricks, and also to network. But in “real life,” aren’t you more prone to give your business to the person that tells you about his or her children, summer vacation or latest bargain buy as he or she sells you the product or provides the service?

The same goes for social media. Balance is key. Like food, don’t over-indulge sharing every explicit detail of your personal life, but lob out information here and there that people can relate to, sit back and enjoy the ride.